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BIG PHYSICS, BIG QUESTIONS –

When computers were human: The black women behind NASA’s success

By Kate Becker

Before computers existed as we know them, data was processed by women, often black women. But they were much more than mere calculators. Indeed, the achievements of Katherine Johnson and many others were integral to NASA’s success. The film Hidden Figures, about their part in the race for space, is currently on release in the US and will be out in the UK on 17 February. Here are a few of their stories.

Dorothy Vaughan

NASA Langley Research Center

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In 1943, Dorothy Vaughan, a 32-year-old high school mathematics teacher, started a new job. She became a Grade P1 mathematician, helping with the wartime effort at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. As the prime aircraft test facility of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), Langley was racing to make combat planes fly further, faster, on less fuel. To process the deluge of data from wind tunnels and other experiments, Langley needed number crunchers. It found them in “human computers”. These mathematicians were all women and, thanks to a recent executive order banning racial discrimination in defence hiring, many – like Vaughan – were black.

In 1949, Vaughan was made head of West Computing. Though it was segregated, Vaughan was nevertheless the first black woman to hold the position and the first black supervisor at NACA. She remained in the role until 1958, when the unit was shut down and NACA became NASA. On one hand, it was a victory for integration: Vaughan took a position working side-by-side with men and women of all races, programming the new electronic computers. On the other hand, Vaughan would never regain the rank she had held at West Computing, though she stayed with NASA until 1971, distinguishing herself as an expert FORTRAN programmer.

Mary Jackson

NASA Langley Research Center

As a mathematician and, later, an engineer at Langley, Mary Jackson worked on experimental supersonic aircraft, analysing how air flowed over every tiny feature, right down to the rivets. She also spent time in Langley’s wind tunnels, making painstaking adjustments to whittle down drag forces.

Jackson was invited to work in the wind tunnel after two years in the computing pool. To earn the new position, she had to take graduate-level courses after work hours, with special permission to sit in on the all-white classes. In 1958, she became NASA’s first black female engineer.

She was never promoted, though, and after 30 years, she made a change. Jackson had always tried to support women at NASA who were keen to advance their careers, advising them on coursework or ways to get a promotion. She took a job in human resources, helping other women and minorities advance into roles she had never been able to attain herself.

Miriam Mann

Courtesy of Duchess Harris

Miriam Mann started work as a Langley computer in 1943, thinking she would stay only as long as the war effort required her. But the war came and went, and Mann stayed – unlike the sign in the cafeteria. It read “Colored Computers” and relegated the black women of West Computing to a lone rear table. For Mann, this was too much. She took the sign away. Although a replacement materialised before long, the little rebellion shook up the department.

She was still at Langley when the first electronic computers were installed, and when West Computing was disbanded, she partnered with an engineer working on the mechanics of space docking manoeuvres. She stayed until 1966, when her health failed her. And although by then the “Colored Computers” sign was long gone, Mann’s story was passed down through her family and through the other women of West Computing: a story to inspire and empower.

Christine Darden

NASA

As a sonic boom researcher at Langley, Christine Darden spent 25 years learning how to keep things quiet – that is, how to minimise the ear-shattering shock waves from faster-than-sound planes and rockets. But Darden herself was never one to stay silent. She joined the Langley computing pool in 1967 and dutifully ran the numbers for eight years. But she started to wonder: why were men with the exact same credentials and experience landing the higher-level engineer positions? Her question earned her the transfer she wanted, to engineering, where she began the sonic boom research that would take her to the upper levels of NASA management.

By the time she retired, in 2007, she had authored more than 50 papers on supersonic boom and aircraft design, and reached the senior executive level at NASA – the first African American to do so.

Annie Easley

NASA

Annie Easley started out as a computer at the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Hired in 1955, she became a programmer when computers became machines, honing her skills in programming languages like FORTRAN and SOAP.

In the 1970s, as well as daring to wear trousers to work, she made another radical choice and went back to college. She had joined NACA with just two years of pharmacy coursework on her resume. She completed a mathematics degree in 1977 while working 40-hour weeks.

Over the years, Easley produced code that went on to be used in renewable energy research, including batteries for early hybrid vehicles, as well as for the high-thrust liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen Centaur rocket used to get space capsules into orbit.